Workers BushTelegraph is primarily for original articles, original news, stories you can’t read elsewhere, original verse, original pictures, videos and music.
Note from the Editor.
WBT has arrangements, albeit informal, with writers, political activists, musicians, artists and film makers to post their work on this website.
If you wish to have something published please write to:
Ian Curr
The Editor,
Workers BushTelegraph
Mob 0407687 016
Email iancurr@bigpond.com
It is best to send articles in Word format checked for accuracy and grammar.
Authors will be contacted for approval before publication.
Comments Policy
Comments are published automatically and are the responsibility of the author. Please keep comments as short as possible.
A valid email address is required to make comment. Email addresses given by commentators are private and are not distributed without their knowledge and consent.
I read ALL the comments that are posted.
Occasional abusive comments aside, I thank everyone who takes the trouble to comment. Please keep commenting!
Second, I’m not going to publish all comments – i.e. I will not publish racist or anti-worker sentiments.
My primary interest with this website is to present useful information and ideas and notices that may, I hope, have practical significance.
I’m not setting up a debating forum, although experience tells me that will happen.
Sometimes people just wish to vent their anger.
WBT publishes material on notoriously sensitive topics.
These are topics that attract a fair amount of anger & silliness – along with very thoughtful input.
WBT does not seek ‘balance’ in reporting when it favours the wealthy and powerful, the bigoted or the sectarian — readers will have to go to the mass media for that.
Topics covered on WBT
- The Master/servant relationship. The power of boss over worker. More can be found out about this at the LeftPress Website – After the Waterfront – the workers are quiet
- The struggle of indigenous people for land rights and social justice in Australia.
- The role of government. What enterprises should government own and run. Why and how?
Workers BushTelegraph aims are shown at Welcome
WBT may decline to publish material that contradicts its purpose.
Ian Curr, Editor, Workers BushTelegraph
[Thanks to Joseph & Syd for this policy]
Hello reader,
Re Rachel’s comment :- “I checked your homepage. It says nothing about how you determine whether an email is private or for publication. ”
Similar rules apply with emails as with other documents/photos, they will not be published without approval of the author(s).
If people could place something like ***To be posted on WBT *** at the top of the email to be published that would help me from losing sleep.
Ian
Editor
To respond to your points:
1. You’re letting yourself off too lightly. An armchair is appropriate for a psychologist. But I accused you of being an armchair warrior, ready to fight to the last drop of Palestinian and Israeli blood.
2. Who are the people of Israel? They are the citizens of Israel, the ones who got sick of being targets of 60 years of invasions, terrorism, suicide bombings, missiles threats of annihilation and being driven into the sea. Bombs and terrorists make no distinction between Christians, Muslims, Bedouins, assorted others, and not forgetting what you just called “people like yourself”. Who are they? “They-who-must-not-be-named”? Though to give away a secret, sometimes you call them “Zionists”, and if they support your line, “Jews who agree with me”. You know it is very poor form to appropriate the name of someone else’s national liberation movement and turn it into a term of abuse.
Since you dubbed me “Rachel” and I don’t support your line, I guess I must be a “Zionist”, which feels wierd, but I am actually quite proud to be a centre left Jew.
3. And who are Palestinians? I know quite a few here who are what you would call “Zionists”. You see, there have always been Jews living in Israel, unlike Anglos in Australia.
I checked your homepage. It says nothing about how you determine whether an email is private or for publication.
I suppose we should stop here and agree to differ, as it really doesn’t help does it?
Hello Rachel,
Re: ‘Surely you must understand the psychology of conflict resolution’ and ‘you can retreat to your armchair’?
Hey, that’s a first, I have never been accused of being an armchair psychologist.
You ask me to ‘bend a little’. Like a psychologist would…?
What did psychology and its theories of conflict resolution ever do for the people of Palestine?
Regarding your accusation of the ‘unethical way (I) published our conversation‘ I refer readers to the home page for the publishing policy on Workers BushTelegraph.
Ian
Nov 2010
“Hello”, “Newman” ! … err… Ian
Have you considered that the reason you get such angry comment is because you refuse to acknowledge the pain of the Israeli people? Surely you must understand the psychology of conflict resolution? When a third party who pretends to be a conflict resolver takes sides, they heighten the conflict even more than if they let the original contenders slug it out. How does that help? If you bent a little, and informed yourself of the complexities of the middle east conflict, including the fact that you do not speak for all Palestinians by any means, your angry critics would bend a little. You cannot paint me into a corner about being unsympathetic to Palestinians. Quite the contrary. I am unsympathetic to people who are neither Israeli or Palestinian who insist on adding fuel to the flames by taking sides. Maybe you could consider that this is a tragic conflict between two numerically small peoples who are horribly oppressed, in different ways of course, and maybe both need to feel supported before they can stop lashing out. This is not some gladiatorial fight for your ideological gratification. Both Palestinians and Israelis, and of course Jews, have a desperate stake in this. Whatever happens, you, however, can retreat to your armchair and continue to theorise at leisure.
About your imputation about me not using my real name, well, it was you who named me thus, as a sop to the unethical way you published our conversation. It’s a bit much to now take me to task for not finishing what you started.
Hello ‘Rachel’,
At you request, I have removed the ‘Debate on Zionism’ to which you refer in your comment below.
Regarding your comment in the other thread, I point out that Workers BushTelegraph contains a lot of articles, comments, debates, transcripts, videos about Palestine. From all different perspectives. Much of the material comes from people like yourself. I can find little acknowledgement in their words of the pain of the Palestinian people, refugees in their own land, homeless for generations. You keep referring to how Palestinians are treated in other Arab states, particularly Lebanon.
I have not been to Lebanon but I have followed reports and films of the struggle of the Palestinians there since the Tel al-Zaatar massacre in 1976. I first saw a film about the horrors of Tel al-Zaatar in 1977. The film was shown in Brisbane by Vanessa Redgrave in 1977 (I think). The Chrisitian Phalange ruthlessly killed Palestinian refugees at Tel al-Zaatar in 1976; the Phalange under the instigation and protection of the Israeli army repeated this by killing innocent refugees at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982). The Southern Lebanese army (SLA) was sponsored and trained by Israel. In 2001 our own government through Attorney General Phillip Ruddoch interceded to give 200 members of the SLA refuge and citizenship in Australia.
Anyway back to publishing policy, I do not censor your arguments or those of anyone else.
However I will not publish racist abuse. ‘Lowedabulla’, for example, has confused ‘argument’ with ‘abuse’. He villifies people and that is why I have censored him on one occasion only. Much of his stuff is not argument his comments are repetitive, formulaic and unconvincing.
Sometimes people say things in the moment which, on reflection, they regret. That is fine. They can clarify what they say in later comments. Like you, they can protect their identity, but my preference is for people to use their own names.
Ian
Forgot to add, have you removed the emails you published while I was under the impression that we were having a private debate. Yes, I admit, I bcc’ed one other person, in a moment of impulsive bad judgment, but I apologised immediately, and it’s not the same thing.
“Authors will be contacted for approval before publication.”
Excellent. This is a great leap forward in journalistic ethics!